Work has begun on a new $50m windfarm in Victoria that will edge the Australian Capital Territory closer to its clean energy supply target, as the renewables sector begins to emerge from a political impasse that threatened to cripple it.
The Coonooer Bridge windfarm, north-west of Bendigo, has secured a 20-year feed-in tariff from the ACT government to supply Canberra properties, as part of an ACT goal to produce 90% of its electricity from clean sources by 2020.
The 20-megawatt project, which consists of six wind turbines, will supply enough electricity for 14,000 Canberra homes. Australian business Windlab, with finance from Japanese firm Eurus Energy, is overseeing the work.
The local community also has a stake, with anyone living within 3km of the turbines sharing a 3.5% slice of the project. The turbines will be operational by February 2016.
A number of renewable energy projects have flickered to life since the Coalition and Labor ended months of torturous negotiations in May to slash the renewable energy target, which mandates the amount of clean energy in Australia.
Although the RET was reduced significantly from 41,000 gigawatt hours to 33,000 gigawatt hours, the resulting deal ended a long period of uncertainty that caused a 90% slump in investment in the large-scale renewables industry over the past year.
The prime minister, Tony Abbott, recently expressed regret that the RET was not cut further and has voiced concern over the potential health impacts of “visually awful” wind turbines. Treasurer Joe Hockey is also disquieted by windfarms, previously calling them “utterly offensive”.
Although multiple reviews have shown there is no proven link between wind turbines and poor human health, a Senate inquiry is exploring the issue. The federal government is to appoint a windfarm commissioner to investigate complaints about wind turbines.
“We’ve had a couple of years of uncertainty and challenge in Australia, so this is great news for us and the local community today,” Rob Fisher, chief financial officer of Windlab, told Guardian Australia. “Wind energy brings employment to the bush, it brings money to farmers. That’s a good thing.
“We didn’t want the RET to be cut. Ultimately it was a political compromise, but there’s now more certainty for investors. We’ve already seen a number of international investors knocking on our door and there are companies prepared to put money into Australia.
“There is now a much more optimistic mood in the industry than there has been for a long time.”
Following the completion of three wind projects, including Coonooer Bridge, the ACT is expected to derive 50% of its energy from renewable sources by 2017. Simon Corbell, ACT’s environment minister, said other jurisdictions in Australia are looking at the territory’s approach to renewables.
“There is strong support for the policy in the Canberra community and strong support across Australia,” he told Guardian Australia. “As a nation, we can’t rely on national policy settings. We can seen how quickly architecture on renewable energy and carbon pricing can be undermined.”
Corbell said the federal Coalition was “pandering to the interests of a minority” of people opposed to renewable energy.
“They don’t reflect the majority view and they don’t reflect the global reality of economies transitioning to a low-carbon future,” he said. “The federal government needs to understand there are jobs and an environmental imperative to transition to a low-carbon economy.”
The Clean Energy Council predicts $10bn will be invested in 30 to 50 large-scale renewable projects across Australia over the next five years. The large majority of these will be windfarms, which will help offset an estimated 15m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from fossil fuel-generated power.
While the Windlab project was directly backed by the ACT government, a number of other projects are set to benefit from the RET deal. These include the White Rock windfarm near Inverell in New South Wales and FRV’s 150MW solar plant in far north Queensland.
Solar Choice is now set to progress with its $1bn solar farm on Queensland’s Darling Downs, Westgen is planning a solar farm and a bio-energy plant and CWP Renewables is set to build 159 wind turbines in the NSW northern tablelands region.
Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said: “The investment landscape for large-scale renewable energy such as wind and solar farms has been frozen during the uncertainty faced by the industry over the last 18 months.
“Australia has some of the best sun, wind and waves in the world, and investors realise we can make a lot better use of these natural resources to power our future.”
